Beyond the Biz: GoDaddy's girl, Davids dish and rodents run

Published on April 02, 2007.

GoDaddy announced it discovered a new GoDaddy girl during Bike Week in Daytona Beach, Fla., at the Broken Spoke Saloon. Lara Haworth, an executive assistant for Hawaiian Tropic who hails from Cleveland, won the talent search for being "hot" and "edgy," according to GoDaddy founder-CEO Bob Parsons. "She's a great fit for sure," he said. Parsons seems pretty hands-on picking company representatives, and he is partial to Bike Week events: He rode his Harley-Davidson motorcycle 2,200 miles from Scottsdale, Ariz., to Daytona to conduct the auditions. GoDaddy made a name for itself with a Super Bowl commercial two years ago that parodied the 2004 Janet Jackson halftime show "wardrobe malfunction," in which an attractive, buxom brunette—Candice Michelle—has a wardrobe malfunction of her own. Haworth joins Michelle, whom Parsons also hand-picked, along with Indy car driver Danica Patrick and motorcycle drag- racing star Valerie Thompson, as a spokeswoman for the company. The domain name registration and Web hosting company will be holding further auditions for additional GoDaddy girls at a Bike Week event in Arizona and at the famous Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in Sturgis, S.D., in August, an event that typically draws more than 500,000 motorcycle fans. At the end of the year, one of the three Bike Week winners will be chosen as the GoDaddy Girl 2007 with the possibility of being featured in next year's Super Bowl ad. — Carol Krol

New York University's Media Talk, a new speakers series on publishing and media, kicked off last month with a dynamic (media) duo: David Carr, media columnist of The New York Times, and David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, billed as the "Two Davids." Carr questioned Remnick about an ever-changing media landscape and what role the written word plays in an increasingly digital age. "The more we tell each other that everything has to be bite-sized, eventually that's all we'll be left with," said Remnick, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author ("Lenin's Tomb"), who has been editor of The New Yorker since 1998. The conversation also touched upon Remnick's efforts to ramp up The New Yorker's presence online with, among other things, streaming video, animated versions of the publication's cartoons and a daily blog on the recovery efforts in New Orleans. "It's not without trepidation," Remnick said, referring to The New Yorker's efforts to expand online. "We don't enter into things easily and don't want to train the audience to think everything online is free." The New Yorker, which first appeared in 1925, is braced for what is expected to be dramatic alterations in the deliver of news and information, Remnick added. "The apparatus may change and we have to be there when it happens," he said. "I don't care if you read [The New Yorker] on the back of your arm." — Matthew Schwartz

Having pest problems? Are rats lurking around in your kitchen looking for a tasty midnight snack? That raccoon just won't leave your trash can alone? Well look no further, a solution has finally arrived. After news of a February rodent infestation in one of New York's KFC/Taco Bell restaurants, JAD Corp. of America created a rodent repellent trash bag that claims to ward off rodents of all sorts, including mice, rats and raccoons. The bags have been tested for their ability to repel rodents and, according to a recent laboratory study, while pesky rodents meddled with 58% of standard garbage bags, more than 90% of JAD's bags resisted rodent penetration. The special ingredients? A combination of resin, natural oils and fragrances that work cooperatively to produce an odor that deters pests. This "state of the art" trash bag is even available in custom sizes to fit all rodent repellent needs. — Emerald Morrow